Archive for category: emptywheel

At least that’s what I infer from the comments of the lawyer from the public defender’s nonprofit that will now take on Wilkes’ defense in one of two cases (thanks to chrisc for sending this on) he has been charged on.

A lawyer from Federal Defenders of San Diego Inc., a nonprofit thatrepresents indigent people accused of federal crimes, will representWilkes in the criminal case with co-defendant Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, theformer third-highest-ranking official at the CIA.

[snip]

Federal Defenders of San Diego has several experienced lawyers who havecleared stringent background checks, Frank Mangan, the nonprofit’ssenior litigator said in an interview. The attorneys have worked oncases of enemy combatants accused of terrorism and who are being heldin Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Mangan said.

One of the office’s 40 lawyers will appear with Wilkes at ahearing scheduled for next month. At that point, Burns is expected toset a new trial date in 2008.

At issue is that Wilkes’ selected lawyer, Mark Geragos, refused to get a security clearance in a case in which one of the charged crimes has to do with Wilkes and Foggo setting up an air service of the type the CIA uses to conduct its extraordinary renditions. The judge in the case, Larry Burns, threw Geragos off the case and, after reviewing Wilkes’ financial declaration, decided that Wilkes is now indigent and will have a government-paid lawyer. I kind of like the karma that Wilkes will likely be defended by a guy that has also defended the kinds of people Wilkes aspired to deliver unto torture.

In a post on the $80,000 settlement BushCo had to pay for ejecting two people wearing an anti-Bush (that is, pro-America) t-shirt from a presidential rally, Pam Spaulding links to the Advance Manual used to prepare for such presidential rallies; the government turned over a very heavily redacted copy of the Manual during the suit. The Manual makes for intriguing reason for those who have gotten bored with Orwell, in particular the description of the "rally squads"–college/young Republicans,  local athletic teams, or sororities/fraternities–recruited to drown out the voices of anti-Bush attendees. I don’t mean to suggest Democrats don’t contest negative messages in the same way. But please. Call them something besides "rally squads." (I may be particularly sensitive because, after I consistently kept the ultimate team up very late on a tournament trip once, and after he learned that my mother’s maiden name resembles "rally," mr. emptywheel dubbed me the "rally captain" for the rest of that season.)

But I noticed something else interesting about the manual. As is normal for a document redacted by the government, each of the redactions is marked as such (though the government did not provide explanations for the redactions). Except in one case:

Funny. In the entire Peter Baker article entitled, "Rove: Departure Unrelated to Investigations," Peter Baker never once quotes Rove as saying, "my departure is unrelated to the multiple investigations in my conduct." Or anything similar. Sure, Rove talks a lot about Ahab and Moby Dick.

"I realize that some of the Democrats are Captain Ahab and I’m thegreat white whale," he said. "I noticed the other day some Democraticstaffers were quoted calling me the big fish. Well, I’m Moby Dick andthey’re after me."

He admits that his departure won’t necessarily dissuade Democrats from investigating. But he never denies–certainly not in the any of the quotes included in the article–that he’s leaving because of the investigations.

Indeed, the whole thing reads like Rovian spin (and not very good spin at that) to try to suggest that Democrats will get hurt as they continue to pursue Rove’s actions.

In the interview, Rove criticized the Democrats for pursuing him andsaid their investigations have diminished their public support. "Thereis a reason," he said, "why the Congress has gone from high standingafter the ’06 election to being less popular than the president."

Mind you, Rove doesn’t provide any real data to prove his point. That’s probably for the best, Read more →

Yup, still mono-focused on FISA, but mr. emptywheel is clamoring for dinner, so maybe once I step away from the computer, I’ll remember all the other things I’ve been meaning to write on.

I want to object to the way Kevin Drum is referring to the new details of FISA:

Originally, FISA allowed warrantless wiretapping of anycommunication between two foreigners. It also allowed warrantlesssurveillance of "foreign powers" (including those on U.S. soil) as longas there was no substantial likelihood that the surveillance wouldinclude conversations with U.S. persons. "Foreign powers" did notinclude terrorist groups.

Democrats and Republicans were both willing to amend FISA to allowlimited surveillance of terrorist groups, and both were willing toamend FISA to overcome technical problems that had made it difficult tomonitor certains kinds of foreign-to-foreign communications. So whatwas the disagreement? Originally I thought it was mainly about how tofix one of the technical problems: namely, given modern communicationsnetwork architecture, what procedures do you need to put in place toensure a high likelihood that U.S. persons won’t be surveilled while atthe same time allowing NSA the widest possible latitude to monitorgenuine foreign-to-foreign communications?

However, that appears not to be the case.  Rather, NSA (and the White House) were specifically looking for newauthority Read more →

I’m working on a massive post on how the Administration has gamed the system to sustain their wireless wiretapping program. For the moment, though, I’d like to make a discrete point about the aborted Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) inevstigation into the program.

When Senator Spector asked Alberto Gonzales last year why BushCo refused to give OPR the clearance to investigate the wireless wiretapping program because OPR included many career employees, this is how he responded (note–he didn’t actually respond to these questions until some time after January 17 of this year).

Did the Department treat reject OPR’s request for clearances because OPR has only career appointees?

No. The request of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) for access to classified information about the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) was not treated differently than similar requests for access by other Department components. Nor was OPR’s request denied because OPR has only career appointees.

Indeed, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, which – other than the Inspector General, who was appointed by President Clinton – is made up entirely of career appointees, has been granted access to classified information about TSP. Similarly, many of the Department employees in other components who have been granted access to classified information about TSP are career, not political, employees.

Moreover, as the Attorney General mentioned in his opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on February 6, 2006, career lawyers at the National Security Agency’s Office of General Counsel and Office of the Inspector General have been intimately involved in the oversight of the program.

Gonzales answers the specific question–whether the Administration was afraid of career employees–but he doesn’t answer the underlying question–why the Administration refused the clearance. He does, however, offer a really lame explanation for that general question to a later follow-up question: